1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to semiconductor memories, and more specifically to protocol-based dynamic random-access memories such as Rambus dynamic RAMs
2. Description of the Related Art
Protocol-based dynamic random-access memories developed by Rambus Inc. are considered to be a representative of future technologies for personal computers because of a number of beneficial features, among which high speed performance is most attractive. In a Rambus memory system, dynamic RAMs are connected via a bus to a master device, the master device sends packets in a predetermined address format to a destination bus interface that interfaces to the associated dynamic RAM. This address format varies with the size of each RAM.
When it is desired to reconfigure the memory system, some of the memories of default size are assembled into a memory of larger size. This reconfiguration is unknown to the master device, or memory controller. When the reconfigured memory system is then initialized to update the device identifiers of the bus interfaces, discrepancies occur in address format between the memory controller and the bus interfaces. As a result, part of the identifier bits sent from the memory controller is discarded and same identifiers are assigned to different bus interfaces.